


Life Isn't Fair, and God is Cruel

by CumberCurlyGirl



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman, call me by your name - Fandom
Genre: 1983, Angst, Falling In Love, First Love, First Time, Internalized Homophobia, Italy, Loss, M/M, Making Love, Oliver isn't as confident as Elio would lead us to believe, POV Oliver, period typical terminology for the mentally disabled, plato - Freeform, reimagining of their first night from Oliver's POV, sexual awakening, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:47:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CumberCurlyGirl/pseuds/CumberCurlyGirl
Summary: Their first night together (and the day leading up to it), from Oliver's point of view.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 26
Kudos: 106





	Life Isn't Fair, and God is Cruel

**Author's Note:**

> To say that I fell in love with the book and the film (and these men) might be an understatement. 
> 
> I found myself wondering about Oliver. What was he thinking? Was he scared? Was he really as self-confident as Elio saw him? I wanted to get into his head. This story is the result. 
> 
> If you have only seen the film, Vimini is a neighbor of the Perlman's who is dying of leukemia and also happens to be a genius. I was sorry that her character was not in the film and wanted to include her.
> 
> Special thank you to KameoDouglas for her always insightful beta-ing.

**_Each of us, then, is a token of a human being, because we are sliced like fillets of sole, two out of one; and so, each is always in search of his own token._ **

**_Aristophanes (Plato’s_ “ _Symposium”_ )**

_Somewhere in northern Italy, summer, 1983._

I’d done it. I'd left the note, folded neatly and placed on his desk where he would see it after breakfast. “Grow up. I’ll see you at midnight.” A bit dramatic, midnight, but it would be better if the dinner guests were gone and the household safely asleep and unaware. Midnight is the hour for dark deeds, and wasn’t this going to be a dark deed? _If_ he actually came? But I knew in my gut that he’d come. That I’d read him correctly. Regardless of my gut, I promised myself that we’d talk first, because I owed him that much. Did he even comprehend the implications? He was smart, but young, and the thought of consequences so rarely overrides the heedless audacity of youth. Perhaps that was why I had unkindly written, “grow up.”

I parked the bike and then checked my watch as I walked into the café. Ten a.m. Fourteen hours to Elio.

********

After playing poker, and losing fifty thousand lire, for I had been too preoccupied to concentrate, I picked up my pages from the translator, left a new batch with her, and started back to the house. As I rode past the place where we had turned off the road just a few days ago, I stopped, put one foot on the gravel, and gazed at the path down which he had led me to his special spot. He told me he hadn’t taken anyone else there. He might have been lying, though. I imagined him and Marzia, naked in the grass there on Monet’s Berm, then quickly pushed the thought aside. I believed him.

I had had such a spot back home in Connecticut when I was his age. But it was not nearly as beautiful, or tranquil, or storied. No famous artist had ever painted there. I remember how it felt to be absolutely alone with my thoughts on my rock under a canopy of trees, listening to the soft gurgle of the creek. Reading, dreaming. I had never shared my spot with anyone. I’d take girls to the bank of the nearby lake, or to the hayloft of our barn. Never to my spot.

He had shared his with me, and it hinted of desperation. And I sensed that he was trying to obligate me by giving me something so intimate. In the end, I supposed it had worked. I remembered the kiss, the feel of his tongue on my lips, and the aroma of summer on his skin. Sweat, sun, a hint of fresh-cut grass, and something else. It was as if I could smell the ache of his desire as it seeped from every pore. Had he smelled mine? I had tried to act so nonchalant, so in-control, when all I wanted was to say “Yes, Elio. Yes! Let me devour you. Let me hold you so close that you don’t know where you end, and I begin. Let me.”

I rechecked my watch before pedaling off. Noon. Twelve hours to Elio.

********

I arrived at the house just in time for lunch in the garden. We barely spoke or looked at one another, continuing the silence that he had complained about in his note. I was sure he had gotten my response to his message, and maybe I was afraid that if I looked at him, if we spoke, it would be obvious to everyone at the table. Or maybe I was second-guessing my confidence that he had welcomed my invitation. Perhaps I had misinterpreted, and he really just wanted to talk. _Midnight._ If I had written “eight o’clock” or “after lunch,” it would have meant something so different, but I had said “midnight” and that word dripped with subtext and carried either promise or threat, depending on your point of view.

The uncomfortable silence hung between us, and we rushed to fill it by making small talk with the others at the table. We talked of my book, the dinner guests who were expected that evening, the deliciousness of the tortelli di zucca that Mafala had served. Anything. Everything. Did he know that this was as difficult for me as it was for him? He, at least, had youth to fall back on as an excuse. Angst and drama are to be expected when you are seventeen. I, on the other hand, felt much older than my twenty-four years and the realization that perhaps I was not who I thought I was had unsettled me. I felt adrift, like I was floating above my body as an observer and wondering just who this man was. He looked familiar, and he was wearing my clothes, but he was a stranger.

At last, Elio excused himself, and as he stood, I asked him the time. I had purposely removed my watch. I wanted him to tell me. Perhaps it was cruel, but I wanted him to be forced to say it and to have it be a coded message between us. _How many hours until?_

“Two,” he replied casually, before walking away without looking back. I watched him. His thin legs reminded me of brown twigs disappearing into his shorts, which covered the parts of him that I hadn't seen but often imagined, and I could just make out the sharpness of his shoulder blades under the loose T-shirt. I bit my lip and then remembered Mrs. P., his mother, who was still at the table. She was looking at me thoughtfully as she blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. We exchanged a few pleasantries, I don’t remember what, and I probably excused myself with my customary “later,” before heading to the kitchen to tell Mafalda that I wouldn’t be home for dinner.

Back in my room, I changed into my red swim trunks and put on my watch. Then I tiptoed across the floor through our shared bath, pressed my ear to the door of his room, and listened. Silence. Was he in there? Was he lying on his bed? Was he holding the piece of lined paper that held both our words in one hand with the other down his pants? I smiled at the thought.

********

Vimini was waiting for me at the gate when I arrived. She was wearing shorts, a bright yellow button-up shirt, a floppy hat, and her dark hair hung loosely over her shoulders. She smiled and waved when she saw me and then frowned as I approached.

“You’re late! I’d almost given up on you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Professor Perlman wanted to show me some slides. He was very excited about them, and I couldn’t refuse. But you know that I’d never stand you up.”

“I should think not," she replied. "With me dying and all. It would be very rude.” I had never gotten used to the precocious ten-year old’s matter-of-fact attitude about her illness, and I didn’t know how to respond, so instead, I touched the brim of her hat. “Nice hat.”

She scrunched up her face in a look of annoyance. “Mother made me wear it. Says I’m getting too sunburnt.” She took the hat off and dropped it to the ground. “But I don’t care. I’m going to get all the sun I can, while I can.” She took my hand, and we walked together down the stairs to the beach and the rock where she liked to sit.

I helped her onto the rock then sat down beside her, and we looked out over the water. The August sun was shining bright in a cloudless sky, the color of a blue jay’s wing. The only sounds were the gentle lapping of waves against the rocks and the occasional cry of gulls.

“So, what was on the slides?” she asked after we had sat in silence for some time.

“Statues. Greek statues. Ancient and very beautiful.”

She sighed. “Statues get to be beautiful for ages and ages. Real people only get to be beautiful for a short time. And some people get a shorter time than others. I wish I could grow up to be beautiful and adored and find True Love. It’s not fair.”

I squeezed her hand. “No, Vimini, it’s not.”

She squeezed back. “I’m sorry to be so melancholy, let’s talk about something happier.” She turned her face to mine and smiled brightly, but the smile could not cover the deep sorrow that remained in her eyes. She was old for someone so young, and I silently cursed God’s cruelty in blessing her with such a keen intelligence, which only made her more aware of her tragedy. It reminded me of Charlie in _Flowers for Algernon_ , the retarded man granted temporary genius only to comprehend what he was doomed to lose.

“So, are you going to be a professor of classics like Elio’s father?”

“I hope so.”

“Teach me something then, Professor Oliver.”

I thought for a minute. “Have you ever heard of Plato?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course! Everyone’s heard of Plato.”

“You mentioned finding True Love. Plato wrote one of his major philosophical works on the nature of love. It’s called _Symposium._ Have you read it?” She shook her head.

“In it, Socrates, Aristophanes, and some other men give speeches in praise of Eros, the god of love and desire. It’s Aristophanes’ speech that I think you’ll find most interesting.

Aristophanes explained that in the beginning, the human race consisted of three types: male, female, and a combination of the two—androgynous. They were globular beings, with two faces on one head, with four legs and four arms, and two sets of genitals."

“Like big beach balls!” Vimini interjected.

“Yes,” I laughed. “Round because each was the offspring of a celestial body. Males of the sun, females of the earth, and the androgynous of the moon. Having so many arms and legs made humans fast and strong, and they attempted to ascend to heaven to assault the gods. To weaken them, Zeus cut them in half, moved each face inward so that it might contemplate the wound, and then closed the edges of the opening like a drawstring bag, healing it and creating the navel.

“Eww!” she exclaimed, making a face.

“You want me to stop?”

“Oh, no! Please keep going.”

“Well, each half desired to be united with its other half, and when they found each other, they embraced. They became obsessed with clinging to one another, and because they would do nothing else, humans soon began to die off. Then Zeus rearranged their genitals so that when the pairs that had started out as androgynous hugged, they would reproduce.

What about the others?

I shifted uncomfortably. “Um, well...”

“They were gay!”

I exhaled, thankful that I wasn’t going to have to explain.

“I know about homosexuals, Oliver.” She patted my knee as if _I_ were the child.

“You’re right, the others were homosexuals,” I said. “But that’s not the point of the story. Aristophanes’ point was that human beings have inborn in themselves a desire to be whole, and the thing we call love is the quest to reunite our souls, to find our other half, the one that makes us complete.” And then I quoted from _Symposium_ in a dramatic voice:

_“Each of us, then, is a token of a human being, because we are sliced like fillets of sole, two out of one; and so, each is always in search of his own token.”_

“True Love!” she said, equally dramatic, and then more quietly, “So, my other half will never find me. I’ll be dead, but the other ‘me’ will never find True Love—and maybe that’s worse.”

“It’s just a story.”

“Do you believe it, Oliver? That there is only one person in the world that will make you whole?”

I looked out across the water to the horizon and chewed the inside of my lip. Did I believe it? I wasn’t sure. I had seen it in my parents and even my grandparents. It’s what I wanted, and that summer, it had seemed like perhaps I had caught a glimpse of it, of a possibility that was at the same time impossible. I thought of the thin brown legs and the fingers that moved so effortlessly over the piano keys. Vimini was right. Life isn’t fair, and God is cruel.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Kind of.” I thought of Rachel back in Connecticut. We’d been dating off and on for a few years. We’d probably get married after I graduated, buy a house, have kids. It was the future I saw for myself. No matter what happened here in Italy, it was the path that I was on, the only acceptable one. But by tomorrow morning, it might be forever tainted, diminished _._ But I had to risk it. I had to know. Even though, in my heart of hearts, I think I already did.

“Elio has a girlfriend. Marzia. I don’t think they’re each other’s fish, though,” she said.

“Fish?”

“You know, sliced fillets of sole.”

I laughed. “Why not?”

“I can just tell. He likes you, you know.”

I looked at her, my face neutral. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “He pretends not to, but he does. Nobody pretends not to like someone unless they really, really do. That’s what _I_ think anyway.”

I tousled her hair and changed the subject. “ _I_ think you are too smart for your own good, and I have to get back to do some writing before dinner. I’ll walk you home.”

After I said goodbye to her at her door, I checked my watch. Four fifteen. Seven hours and forty-five minutes to Elio.

********

Back at the house, I didn’t see him and didn’t want to. I didn’t plan to see him again until he came, _if_ he came, to our midnight rendezvous. If I hadn’t already had dinner plans with a professor from the university, I would have made plans, or even gone into town and eaten alone. How could we have sat through another meal next to each other without everyone guessing our secret? And even if we didn’t give ourselves away with a glance, with a touch as the salt was passed, or even with feigned indifference or hostility (after all, hadn’t even Vimini seen through that?), it would have been excruciating.

As things turned out, it was excruciating anyway, watching the minutes tick by. I should have left my fucking watch in my room.

*******

When I returned that evening, I saw an unfamiliar car in the drive. The dinner guests were still there, and when I entered, I heard the piano. Elio was playing. I knew without looking that it was him. I could hear him in the music. I knew his style, precise, yet soulful and expressive. Oddly, it made me think of a ballet dancer, except with music, not physical leaps and pirouettes. And then I thought _,_ oh, God—wouldn’t he make a stunning ballet dancer?

I couldn’t help glancing into the sitting room. He was looking down at the keys, and his shoulders were relaxed and swayed gently with the movement of his hands. He was where he was meant to be, at the piano, and the instrument was like an extension of his body. Lucky kid. Not everyone finds their _raison d’être_ , much less at seventeen. His parents and two older men I didn’t recognize stood nearby. Mrs. P. nodded at me, and I smiled at her, then turned and went up the stairs. He hadn’t looked up.

Once in my room, his room, I sat on the bed. Bounced a few times. I wondered if having been given his room had anything to do with how I’d come to feel about him. I’d smelled him right away, even in the laundered sheets. And I knew him by studying the posters on the walls, the books on the shelves, the crayon drawing of a ship on the sea that must have been a decade old pinned to the bulletin board, and the cassette tapes in a drawer of the desk, mostly classical music but a few pop titles. He liked Duran Duran of all things. And then there was the framed postcard of Monet’s Berm, his private spot, the place where he had taken me and practically dared me to kiss him.

At first, I’d felt like an intruder, sleeping in his room, but then I slowly assimilated his possessions. It was as if they had become mine. Ours. The drawing? I could see my hand clutching the crayon as it moved over the paper. The music? I could remember lying on this very bed listening to “Hungry Like the Wolf.” Each night when I slept in his bed, I was lying over the ghost of his body embedded in the mattress, which materialized and took form beneath me in my dreams. In those dreams, I held him and tasted him, and he begged me not to stop as I took him again and again until I woke gasping and utterly alone.

I stood, restless, and paced a few times before checking my watch. Eleven fifty. I stopped in front of the postcard of Monet’s Berm and ran my fingertips over the glass. I needed to relax. I took a joint and a lighter from the stash under a pile of underwear in my drawer and headed down the hall and out of the French doors onto the balcony. I lit the joint and took a long drag. Below on the drive, the dinner guests were saying their goodbyes. I had hoped they’d have been gone by now, and the Perlmans in bed, but it was what it was. The reefer had the intended effect, and I felt the tension that had been with me all day long recede.

It was just after midnight. Was he going to come? Had he lost his nerve, or was he making me wait on purpose. And would _I_ have the nerve, when it came down to it? I had the feeling that what happened or didn’t happen that night would be of monumental importance. If we made love, it would change everything. Absolutely everything. Forever. I’d go back to Rachel, but I would be someone else. And I’d have to live as a changed man. Alone with my secret sin. Alone even with Rachel. And what would it do to _him_? I didn't want to ruin his life. I resolved again to make absolutely sure of his consent.

If he didn’t show, then things would go on as usual, and we’d pretend nothing had ever happened. We’d be cordial, jog, swim, sit next to each other at meals, and then, in less than a month, we’d shake hands and say goodbye. “ _Later!_ ” Just another summer guest. I’d go back to the States and put Elio behind me. He’d become a memory, sharp and painful at first, then fading, but tinged with regret. Would I be forever haunted by the question, _What if?_

My thoughts were interrupted by footsteps behind me. I didn’t turn around but waited for him. When he was standing beside me, and we were looking out into the darkness together, I said, “I’m glad you came.” And I was. I reached out and placed my hand over his as it rested on the railing. He didn’t withdraw it. We hadn’t looked at each other yet, and there was an awkward silence. I found myself bracing for rejection. Perhaps he really just wanted to clear the air between us. I hadn't expected to feel so off-balance. After all, I had rejected his advances at the berm, but now the tables had been turned, and I feared he’d reject mine, that he’d changed his mind. I resolved to keep my cool and remain outwardly unfazed. I didn’t want him to see that deeply into me. Not yet.

“I’m nervous,” he said.

My pulse quickened. " _I’m nervous_." His words cleared up all the uncertainty about what this was. He wasn’t here for a clearing of the air, or any conversation at all for that matter, he was here for one reason only. To fuck. To resolve the question that crackled like static electricity in the air between us. _If we do,_ _will you complete me? When we are so close that there is no you, no me, only us_?

He stepped away, and I followed him to my room, shutting the door quietly behind us. He reached for the joint and took a drag before snuffing it out, and then paced the floor, looking around the room as I stood at the foot of the bed.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said. I didn’t reply but motioned him to come to me. I remembered my promise to be sure of him as he stood fidgeting beside me, looking at the floor and chewing his lip.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Me OK,” he answered, in a barely audible voice, still not looking up. Then he turned abruptly, and I thought he was going to kiss me. But instead, a look that could have been either anguish or relief crossed his face, and he collapsed against me like a rag doll as I wrapped my arms tightly around him. Never before or since have I experienced an action so purely sensual as his slender body surrendering itself. In the years that followed, I would torture myself by reliving that moment.

I immediately dismissed the idea of pressing him further for consent. He couldn’t have been clearer.

He clung to me and brought a leg around my hip, and I could feel his erection under his jeans. I took his face in my hands, my fingers in his hair. “May I kiss you.”

“Yes, please.”

I kissed his forehead, his cheek, and the soft skin of his neck. He moaned and ground his hips against me. I kissed his mouth, and he didn't kiss back at first but closed his eyes and let my tongue and lips caress him. I felt a shudder pass through his body, and I hugged him tighter. We embraced for a long time, standing by the bed, until finally we separated and sat down on the edge of the mattress, holding hands, his head resting against my shoulder.

“Does this make you happy?” I said.

He nodded. He placed his bare foot over mine and massaged me with his toes. I took my other foot and placed it atop his. We watched our feet, intertwined, moving. It was as if we were trying out the joining of our bodies with our feet before committing the rest. It felt good. The rough skin of his sole was like sandpaper against the top of my foot, and when one of his toes slipped between mine, the intimacy of it made me gasp.

We kissed again, and his hand went to my crotch.

“We haven’t talked,” I said, giving him one last out.

“We don’t need to,” he said.

I pushed him down onto the bed and covered him with my body. He wrapped his arms and legs around me like an octopus, holding me as if he were afraid I’d get up and leave at any moment. But by then, I had passed the point of no return. I wanted to see him, I had to see all of him. I wanted to touch and kiss and know every inch of his skin.

After extricating myself, I grasped his T-shirt. “Off,” I whispered, as I pulled it over his head and tossed it to the floor. I kissed his bare shoulders, I buried my nose in the hair of his armpit and inhaled the musky, sweaty, scent of him. I ran my tongue over his smooth chest, and he squirmed and dragged his fingernails over my scalp when I pulled a nipple into my mouth. I sucked gently, and he whimpered.

“Elio, Elio, Elio.” I murmured his name like a mantra as I kissed his stomach while at the same time unfastening his jeans. He lifted his hips, and I slid them down and off. Now he was only in his white briefs and Star of David necklace, which lay on his collarbone, glinting in the moonlight. He was looking at me with wet eyes as I knelt beside him. Was he crying?

Are you all right?

“Oh, Oliver, yes. Please don’t stop now. Please.”

I hesitated. I’d never touched a penis other than mine. I had kissed a boy at summer camp when I was fifteen, and I'd had fantasies—so many, and no matter how hard I tried to steer them toward the conventional, the _normal,_ they always ended up... _here._ This was a momentous step and would be irrefutable proof of something about me that was, frankly, terrifying. Something wrong, but that felt so absolutely, completely, fucking _right_. I didn’t want him to sense my conflicted terror. I only wanted to make him feel desired and safe and _loved._ Because somehow, by some twisted cosmic joke, because life is unfair, and God is cruel, I loved him, and I wanted him. Or perhaps, I wanted him _because_ I loved him.

I didn’t break eye contact as my fingers found the waistband of the briefs or as I worked them off. “Off,” I said again, as I had when I’d removed his T-shirt. Only when they had joined his other clothes on the floor did I sweep my eyes over his naked body as he lay there, still except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest.

Hours each day in the Italian sun had tanned him, and I was drawn to the sharp contrast of his brown torso with the milky white of his hip. I touched the tan line with my fingertip and slowly traced it back and forth on the side nearest to me. He trembled. Then I let my finger follow the line across his belly to his erection, rose-colored and beautiful, circumcised like my own, of course. We were two Jews, wearing our matching Star of David necklaces, cut on the eighth day of our lives as a covenant with God, and about to break one of the six hundred and thirteen _mitzvot_ —commandments—in the Torah. The irony!

As my hand closed around him, he arched his back and clutched the sheets with white-knuckled fists.

“Oh, Oliver!”

“Shush.” I silenced the shout with kisses as I continued to stroke him until, finally, he pushed me away.

“You,” he panted, sitting up.

Kneeling, I began to unbutton my shirt, but my fingers were too slow, and so, with his encouragement, I pulled it off over my head. Before I could even get my arms out, he was unbuckling my belt with almost frantic intensity. Looking down, I watched, mesmerized, as he unzipped my shorts. He looked up at me, smiled, and then the world around me faded to black as the silky warmth of his mouth enveloped me.

We were awkward lovers in uncharted territory. There were moans and laughter, questions and reassurances. _“How shall I touch you?” “Is this OK?” “Oh, God, yes.”_ It was scary, comfortable, surreal, and exhilarating all at the same time. It was everything. At that moment, it was everything. Our bodies and our souls were hungry for one another, and we embraced and rolled, me on top, then him, then me again. I pinned his wrists and pronounced him "mine" as I rutted against him, our cocks sliding together between our bellies. We tasted each other’s skin and breathed each other’s breath. He was exquisite, and I could not get enough of him. 

When the time came, he looked at me with dark eyes full of desire, but I saw fear in them also. “Will it hurt, Oliver?”

I answered truthfully, “I don’t know. Probably it will. Try to relax.” Planning ahead, I had smuggled olive oil from the kitchen, and I hoped it would help. He was on his back, with his legs wrapped around my waist. I wanted to be able to see him, to read his expression, in case he wanted me to stop but was too generous to say so. In hindsight, I should have let him ride me to give him more control, but I was new at this.

When I entered him, he cried out, and his face revealed that it _did_ hurt. It took everything I had to stop the movement of my hips when all I wanted to do was be all the way inside him, and when I did, he opened his eyes.

“Do you want me to stop?” I said.

He shook his head, reached up, and touched my face.

“Don’t stop,” he said. “You’ll kill me if you stop.”

********

Afterward, we lay uncovered in the warm night air, the moonlight shining through the open window making our sweat-soaked skin glisten. Our legs and arms were tangled so that anyone observing might not have known whose were whose, and that seemed very fitting. He was sleeping now, but I could not. In a little while, I would kiss him awake, and we’d make love again, for we had so much wasted time to make up. But first, I just wanted to hold him and think.

We had lain nose to nose, and I had called him Oliver, and he had called me Elio, blurring the line between us. What we had given each other with those words was more important than what we had given each other with our bodies. It was a recognition of something profound that we had discovered in one another. A reflection, a matching puzzle piece. _Like sliced fillets of sole._

And now what?

Now that I had found him, I was going to have to let him go. Was the rest of my life going to be a lie? How could I go back to Connecticut and endure a fraudulent existence without _this_? But I would. I had to. There was Rachel, my family, my friends. I couldn’t imagine them understanding, and I hated myself for my cowardice. He would hate me, too, I supposed.

Like Charlie in _Flowers for Algernon_ , I had been given a gift of something singular and amazing yet could see very clearly how it was going to be taken away from me. Is to have loved and lost really better than not to have loved at all? I wasn’t sure.

I thought of little Vimini. She had wondered if her death was a fate preferable to that of her True Love, who would search for her in vain. _I_ didn’t need to search any longer. I had found him only to lose him and I’d have to live with that. Until I was braver, or until I couldn’t bear it any longer.

I pressed my lips to his forehead as tears rolled down my cheeks. “I’ll find you again,” I whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> When I read Aristophanes' speech in "Symposium", I was drawn to the part about the two separated halves embracing each other with such single-minded desperation that Zeus was forced to move their genitals to save the human race from extinction. My absolute favorite part of the movie is when Elio falls against Oliver in the bedroom and they hug. I can't quite explain it, but that move sends chills down my spine. Every. Single. Time. The fact that references to embracing, hugging, and clinging appear repeatedly in this short fic is not an accident.


End file.
